Noddy Holder’s wife Suzan discusses her husband’s ‘horrifying’ oesophageal cancer diagnosis five years after he was ‘given six months to live’

Noddy Holder’s wife Suzan has spoken about her husband’s ‘horrific’ oesophageal cancer diagnosis, as she reveals he was originally ‘given six months to live’.

The Slade star, 77, shared his five-year battle with cancer last week after keeping the news private because his ‘immunity’ was very low after his treatments and he didn’t want the ‘attention’.

Speak with GB News On Thursday, Suzan insisted there is always hope for others who may be going through a similar struggle.

She began: “Five years ago Noddy was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer and given six months to live, which as you can imagine was terrifying and horrific.

‘But the good news is that five years later he had a form of chemotherapy that was very targeted and very intense.’

Suzan continued, “When he got it five years ago, they told him it was something they hadn’t actually given to anyone.

“He was 72 when he was diagnosed and when they gave him the diagnosis, and they never promise anything about cancer treatment, but he’s doing great.

‘We decided to talk about it now to raise awareness about oesophageal cancer, which is not the same as throat cancer. It is one of the stomach cancers and it is not something that gets much attention.

‘We also want to help The Christie with the work they do and the wonderful treatments they receive.

“We know we have shocked some people, that is not our intention, and we do not want to upset anyone.

“We are very aware that a lot of people are going through all kinds of different things and all kinds of different illnesses and we don’t have a magic answer, but we will do what we can say to people, even with a devastating diagnosis like that, there is always hope .

“They’re coming up with treatments all the time and this treatment he’s had has kept him healthy for the last four and a half years.”

‘One of the reasons we kept it private was because Noddy wanted to deal with it in his own way, which was to focus and concentrate.’

Suzan added: ‘He’s done it all in good humour, that kind of mischievous, that mischievous person has always been like that.

“But telling other people is one of the hardest things because you see the pain you’re causing other people and the worry, and we didn’t want that.

“We’ve had great messages, a lot of wonderful, wonderful messages of support, and we don’t want to talk about it forever.

“I want to be able to do the work we want to do with Christie Hospital and raise money for the stomach cancer research fund.”

In an interview with The Ny Breaking last week, Noddy discussed how his love of hats came in handy during his cancer treatment.

The most iconic was a flamboyant mirrored affair bought at a market. Famously, a young salesman called Freddie told him at the next stall that he wanted to be a pop star, ‘just like you, Noddy’. Of course it was Freddie Mercury.

That hat is now in a bank vault, but Noddy has hundreds more, collected over the past six decades in showbiz.

“I never really stopped wearing the hats and it turned out they came in handy when I lost all my hair,” he said.

‘It wasn’t unusual to see me in a hat, so people didn’t ask questions. No one said, ‘Gosh, Noddy, you don’t look well, are you sick?’

Even the friends and acquaintances who may have thought the Slade frontman wasn’t quite himself didn’t draw the right conclusions.

‘One time we were out with Rod Stewart and his wife. We go a long way back. He didn’t know I was sick and said, ‘We’ll get a bottle of wine’ and I said, ‘No, I don’t drink. I’m on sparkling water’ and he just looked at me and said in a very understanding way, ‘Ah, are you on a program?’, meaning a recovery program.”

“That was such a rock ‘n’ roll reaction,” he laughed.

In the summer of 2018, he sat in a hospital consultation room and was told that he had a malignant tumor in his esophagus.

The indigestion he had attributed to old age was a symptom of something much more deadly. He was told he had six months to live.

“I asked, ‘How long do I have?’ and the advisor said, “Six months.” There was no hope of treatment, nothing at all. I said, ‘Okay then.’

‘I am very philosophical about my life. I thought – and I remember saying it to my wife Suzan – ‘I’ve had a wonderful life. I have achieved a lot, basically everything I ever wanted. I’m not worried. If this is it, then so be it.”

In all the discussions about what would happen next – he would no longer be able to eat, breathing would become increasingly difficult – Noddy did not ask whether he would ever sing again.

“That wasn’t something I even thought about. If you’re told you have six months, it’s not even important. You think about your family.

“You may think, ‘Why me?’ but I guess I thought ‘why not me?’. One in two of us will develop cancer in our lifetime. In the past eight years I have lost three best friends: two to cancer, one to a heart attack.

“Two of them were joking – there’s a lot of black humor in rock ‘n’ roll – about who would leave first. I remember thinking to myself, ‘Oh, silver cloud, I’ll see them again in heaven.’

“They were from the rock ‘n’ roll world, my friends, not famous, but from that world, so there’s no guarantee they would have made it to heaven,” he laughed again.